earless1
12 hours ago
So biological garbage collection pauses then? skip sleep, and the brain tries to run gc cycles during runtime. Causing attention and performance latency spikes. Evolution wrote the original JVM.
dathinab
5 hours ago
this might explain how "power napping" (<30min) can help so much when you are sleep deprived even through it's too short to really count as sleep. I wonder if you can find that when sleep deprived people power nap a "flush" happens then
hinkley
4 hours ago
There’s a phenomenon we have known about since at least the late 1980s when Race Across America riders were using it.
Essentially these guys try to stay up for the first few days and then sleep less than 8 hours after that. Way less. Many of them end up hallucinating by the end, and only their extreme fitness levels probably save them from just dying from lack of sleep.
The trick is that waking up to daylight makes you feel more rested. So the teams would have their riders sleep 2-3 hours from just before dawn until dawn so they would wake up to sunlight. Physiologically the difference is small, but psychologically it’s much bigger.
Some of the effect of power napping is likely the same sort of trickery, just as caffeine is partly trickery and partly adrenal.
ra
14 minutes ago
I used to do adventure races of 24 or 48 hour duration. can confirm that after 20+ hours of endurance you 100% start having microsleeps and hallucinations. 20 mins sleep is all you need to get going again for a few more hours.
layer8
11 hours ago
Luckily it doesn’t clear all unreferenced memory, though.
blauditore
11 hours ago
Fun fact: Suppressed/hidden/lost memories due to trauma that appear to re-surface through therapy are not a real thing, as previously thought (and still by some psychotherapists). Nowadays it's understood by psychology that any memories "re-surfacing" in therapy are in fact newly created, although the patient themselves cannot tell the difference. Allegedly, whole accusations of childhood abuse may have been created out of thin air, without the victim realizing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recovered-memory_therapy (see research section)
pcthrowaway
9 hours ago
Sure it's a real thing for memories to surface that were previously buried. It's happened to me.
If it happens in therapy, that doesn't mean the memories are "implanted". And not all memories lack the ability to validate them... for example, if you've forgotten someone's name, then remember it later, you can call out to them by their name to confirm that you've correctly remembered it.
Memories tumble around in the brain all the time, not all memories are easy to access, but that doesn't mean they're inaccessible.
The point that memories can also be implanted or fabricated during therapy is absolutely an important one, but dismissing the possibility for memories to resurface (and conflating any situation where this might happen with a specific type of discredited therapy) is needlessly reductive.
dbspin
9 hours ago
The problem is not that memories can't be repressed. There's plenty of research demonstrating repression does exist as a defence mechanism. The problem is that even highly evocative memories can also relatively easily be falsified, or modified through elicitation and reframing. Since there's no neurological stenographer, there is no mechanism even in principle to identify the difference between the two. With potential consequences like the satanic panic of recovered and elicited memories of sexual abuse. That's what Elizabeth Loftus and others have shown, and shown so thoroughly that eye witness testimony should never be trusted.
saltcured
8 hours ago
As a counterpoint to this, I am replying here because I can't make myself write a polite response to the GPP.
Yes, witness testimony is always potentially flawed.
But knowing "some repressed memory recovery is false" does not justify saying that repressed memories are not a real thing. Repressed memories do happen. They do come back sometimes. When they do, they are just as valid as any normal memory that a person thinks they always had.
I know because I had them myself. Mine were of trauma in the age range from 5-9. I had a high "ACE score" when I eventually looked into this. I did not have any therapy session prompting the recall, I just remembered them spontaneously around age 15 when I was empathizing with a schoolmate who told me about domestic violence. It was a sickening feeling to have this whole phase of my past come unlocked.
Amazingly, it submerged into repression again. I next remembered it at about age 20. In between, I had years of basically not remembering/knowing that I had any of this trauma or that I had experience the earlier recall. They all came back together, again triggered by an empathetic moment in college. Again it was disorienting to have this whole aspect of my past reopen.
At that later point, I confronted people who were around my childhood and got enough of a painful discussion, confession, and apology to know that these memories were not invented.
I had other forms of childhood trauma that never submerged. I don't know why this one section did.
I find it very offensive for someone to make broad statements that these phenomena do not exist.
oceanplexian
5 hours ago
You might "think" you had a repressed memory but it could all be completely made up. You might even get other people to believe it, because human memory is incredibly faulty. Shared delusions are literally a "known bug" of human biology. Wikipedia has a whole page on them (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folie_%C3%A0_deux). The Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_windshield_pitting_epi...) is yet another example
The thing that changed though is since the 2010s everyone has a high definition camera in their pocket. Everything you do is recorded online. Kids that grew up in the last few years will have their entire childhood recorded in some way or another. Every movement tracked by GPS. Therefore, while I don't agree completely, I wouldn't be surprised if some assumptions about psychology are upended and a great deal of so called repressed memories turn out to be bogus when we can easily disprove them.
JohnMakin
4 hours ago
The person you’re responding to said they did the work of verifying themselves with third parties. Do you not believe that too? People dont suddenly just admit to committing severe abuse because they were convinced to do so. In fact, usually the opposite happens with abusers - they delude themselves into thinking the abuse never happened and believe/defend this very aggressively.
This whole thread is gross. I’d say you should be ashamed of yourself but you likely lack the prerequisite self inspection.
saltcured
5 hours ago
Malicious suppression and gas-lighting are also known functions of human biology.
Yes, real life is messy and ideals like justice are quite difficult or impossible to achieve.
Don't assume you can cleverly deduce a nice, absolute and comfortable answer. That's just another coping mechanism called rationalization.
mrsvanwinkle
5 hours ago
Thank you so much, the parent thread was truly an uncomfortably disturbing read and your post is a necessary contrast to "rational" "objective" "minds" armchairing something so delicate with gross finality.
eiginn
7 hours ago
This mirrors my experience as well of multiple instances over my life of repressing childhood trauma and some event or conversation suddenly bringing it back to the surface.
jimmaswell
7 hours ago
Not to minimize your experience or anything like that, I'm just thinking out loud: What's typically the delineation between repressed and "not on the mind at the moment"? We naturally "forget" things all the time because there's no need for them to be in our current context window, e.g. I can't recite every coffee shop I've been to, but maybe if you start talking about a coffee shop with uncomfortable seats, I'll remember the one I went to with uncomfortable seats. Not a comparable experience in general of course, but one wouldn't say I repressed the coffee shop. Is it more like if I started at "uncomfortable coffee shop", nothing came to mind, but then I later remembered only after smelling some special flavor of coffee beans they had had?
saltcured
5 hours ago
A repressed memory and its associated knowledge and entailment is "not there" until triggered properly. To the extent that our autobiographical memories construct our sense of identity, repressed memories have been censored from ourselves. And, I think it is censored for a purpose, not because it was one too many bits of trivia to keep in ready memory. I think it is a coping mechanism like very deep and targeted denial or dissociation.
When such memories come back, it can be like a mini identity crisis. You suddenly know things that are counter to your self-identity from the moment before. Once I was able to absorb the whole picture and not recoil back into repression, it became a permanent and unpleasant part of my self. .
There can be flashbacks of related events, some of which I also might feel are remembered for the first time in a long time. Those little flashbacks might be like remembering your specific uncomfortable cafe. The overall memory recovery is like suddenly realizing I spent years in a theater of war, that happened to have such cafes in it.
JohnMakin
3 hours ago
IME for me repressed is “not on the mind at the moment” but like so constant that any attempt to access it, your subconscious fights to divert your attention from it. it’s kind of like dim stars you can only see out of the corner of your vision.
the craziest one I had, my reaction wasn’t “oh my god i never knew i had this memory” it was “wow, i cant believe i havent thought about that in 25 years.” I knew and had known it was there all along, I just literally never thought of it to the point my other thoughts just didnt collide with it, ever. It’s almost like your brain just puts it in storage in a dark corner of your garage.
I understand it isn’t the same for everyone, but that was how it felt for me.
TLDR for me it was dissociation, and the only treatment that ever worked was scraping the corners of my mind for stuff like this and it got so much better the issues basically went away. I used a great deal of meditation, particularly tibetan buddhism.
mrsvanwinkle
5 hours ago
I can objectively say your reply minimizes the previous two posts who shared childhood traumas by the objective fact that you are implying (if they are not able to satisfy your Scientific Endeavor) that, if there is no delineation, then their repression of childhood trauma is equivalent and minimized or perhaps exalted if coffee is your religion to the repression of your religious experience of this coffee shop. If you were perhaps a child victim in this coffee shop maybe? You literally erased the trauma part. That is the delineation if you still need to think about this out loud
JohnMakin
4 hours ago
Thanks so much. I was wanting to write a scathing response as well but you calmly explained what I wanted to. I had severe childhood abuse that was documented by third parties I’d completely forgotten about - when I remembered them in therapy, my therapist thought they were fake or delusional too and sorta gaslit me about it. I had to go hunt down the receipts, which for me was traumatic in and of itself and permanently severed a few relationships with my family members, which didn’t have to happen. I fired her over it.
The comments in this thread are indeed disturbing. Clearly many on this forum have led blessed lives and can’t imagine people having it differently,
DiscourseFan
9 hours ago
There are two types of repression, however. The notion that primarily repressed memories--say, those of being breastfed, of being potty trained--could ever resurface is bogus of course. But it is that original violence, first of being cared for, and then having that care taken away and even, in many cases, transforming into authoritarian violence in order to be socialized properly, that precipitates all other "secondary" repressions like Freudian slips, even screen memories or rationalizations. No, most people traumatized past the age of say, 5, won't readily forget it. But perhaps they will have a way of reconciling with that trauma in an unhealthy or not fully conscious manner (consider self-harming, or drug abuse, making up a narrative in order to stay with a partner who violently abuses them). And they will not readily connect their traumatic experiences with their unhealthy coping mechanisms. And we could say that the connection between unconscious behaviors and trauma, when revealed, could be considered a "re-surfacing." Even if I can't remember being breastfed, I know that I find the warm embrace of another's arm's comforting and soothing, and this perhaps relates to my original state of relaxation as a child in my mother's arms, for instance.
drdeca
4 hours ago
Why would it relate to your past experience of being held in your mothers arms, rather than to whatever inbuilt tendencies that lead one to respond well to being held in one’s mother’s arms while a baby?
Like, if kissing is derived from impulses relating to breastfeeding (which is a hypothesis that, AIUI, is in good standing, though not the only one in good standing nor necessarily more favored than a couple others), I wouldn’t think that therefore someone who was only ever bottle-fed as a baby would therefore not get anything out of kissing. The appeal of “my lips on another person” should be there regardless, just as it was for the first time a baby is breastfed (though, of course, it is also a cultural thing: not all cultures have had kissing as a standardized way of expressing affection, so whether one grows up in a context where kissing plays a role, that probably also plays a part in whether one finds it appealing to have one’s lips on another person).
layer8
11 hours ago
People can remember things that hadn’t re-entered their mind for decades. It certainly happened to me a number of times (completely trauma-unrelated and not actively elicited).
Aurornis
10 hours ago
A valid memory spontaneously re-entering your mind is different.
The idea of "repressed memories" was that people had hidden memories that they couldn't access, even if they tried. According to the theory, even if someone brought up the past event and tried to remind the person about it, they would be unable to recall it happening because their brain had blocked it out.
The idea was that only intervention by a therapist or some other special event could help the person "unlock" the repressed memories, making them available for remembering again.
What was really happening was that some therapists were leading people into "remembering" things that didn't happen through aggressive prompting and pushing, much like what happens when an aggressive investigator convinces a vulnerable person to falsely confess to something they didn't do.
tehjoker
10 hours ago
I wouldn't be surprised if there are inaccessible, partly corrupted memories encoded in the hippocampus. I suspect most of them cannot be prompted by a therapist though, and likely there is no practical way to recover them.
strbean
9 hours ago
I think it's all a matter of finding a trigger (or reference) to grab the memory. A therapist talking to you almost certainly wouldn't achieve that, but walking down the street and smelling an odd smell might.
rkhassen9
8 hours ago
I once found a recording of a lab session in high school physics. A day I completely forgot about. A moment that had no bookmarks in my brain.
Other things about that day were surfaced. How my braces felt and the fear I felt about forgetting a textbook.
All real, but unsurfaced until then.
t0mas88
5 hours ago
That makes sense considering that human memory is strongly based on associations. Activating nearby memories can bring things back.
If you hear the first tones or words of a song you're much more likely to be able to tell the lyrics that follow compared to being asked to say those lyrics based on the title.
tehjoker
8 hours ago
I think it depends on the stage of degradation and whether the network is still connected to something that can interpret it.
GuB-42
9 hours ago
This is a more precise statement than just "you can recall things you thought you forgot".
It is specifically about trauma, and generally you don't forget traumatic events and that's often a big part of the problem. We are not talking about trivial things like the name of your maths teacher in high school, which have a tendency to come and go.
It is also specifically about therapy, that is an environment where you are actively encouraged to recall memories. We know how easy it is to make up memories, especially with the help of a third party (here, the therapist).
Combine the two: memories that are hard to forget and an environment conductive to making false memories and it becomes very likely that the "lost" memories are completely made up.
Muromec
5 hours ago
>It is specifically about trauma, and generally you don't forget traumatic events and that's often a big part of the problem.
Oh, of course you can.
theshackleford
6 hours ago
> and generally you don't forget traumatic events
That depends on how many you endured really. Only so much room in the old noggin with everything else important going on.
worldsayshi
10 hours ago
My guess is that long term memory recovery is inherently a reconstruction from the pieces that you have retained. So it is not unlikely to include dreamed up parts.
Aurornis
10 hours ago
The debunked recovered memory therapy was something different: They would use different techniques and leading questions to try to get a patient to think they remembered something that may not have happened at all.
Some of the techniques included hypnosis or even giving the patients (including children) sedative-hypnotic drugs before pressuring them with the leading questions.
If they could eventually get the person or child to claim to have some memory of the event (after asking a lot of leading questions and maybe even drugging them) they considered it to be a recovery of the memory.
layer8
10 hours ago
The accuracy of recollection can certainly vary, but the point is that some information is retained long-term even when it isn’t made use of in the meantime. Of course one could argue that actually it is being made use of unconsciously, but I’m skeptical of that, given the relative irrelevance of the details that can be recollected. It’s also not that difficult to imagine that some memory-representing micro-structures in the brain just happen to be stable over decades even when they remain untapped.
bpj
9 hours ago
This has been my experience as someone who has experienced childhood trauma, and what I've inferred from my therapist. He taught me that the memories I have are typically exaggerations of what happened and it's hard to pin down what truly happened. The only evidence I have that has any merit is my siblings can corroborate with similar experiences since it happened to all of us, and I'm sensitive to things related to these traumas. Almost every day I can feel the things that happened, and on my worst days these areas are much more sensitive.
On top of that, I have legitimate memories that were not traumatic, but still related to the same traumas because said person attempted to encourage these activities throughout my young life on rare occasions. I didn't remember what happened as a kid, but I knew something wasn't right and I wasn't comfortable. It wasn't until I was almost 30 that I had my first "flashback" which was a fractured memory, I still remember it looked like a faded photograph in my mind, and it was accompanied by an extremely uncomfortable feeling.
The re-surfacing memories aren't real in a sense, but in my case they aren't entirely fake either.
I wonder if it's possible that things can be completely imagined with absolutely no basis what-so-ever in certain circumstances, and I also wonder how difficult it is to discern that. It seems to be a difficult concept to manage.
warmedcookie
10 hours ago
Indeed. I was browsing a Nintendo fan site I made in 1998 on archive.org when I was just 11 years old. I don't remember every detail about making it, but my brain had no problem stitching all the pieces it did retain back together.
On the other hand, I do have some Gandalf "I have no memory of this place" moments for other things.
kulahan
9 hours ago
They won't remember it accurately anyways, so it's kind of a moot point.
Though you're right - a specific scent can easily call up an ancient, forgotten memory.
elmomle
10 hours ago
The statement "there is evidence of black swans" does not justify the conclusion "every swan is black".
fsckboy
10 hours ago
if you specialize in looking for black swans, and you've looked for more black swans than anybody ever, and all the black swans you thought you'd found have turned out to be sooty white swans, people might be interested in reading about your experience and have their faith shaken that black swans actually exist.
I'm reminded of the story of dragon sightings in Great Britain: after the printing press and newspapers and newspaper reporters chasing stories emerged, as news distribution out from city centers into rural areas increased, it seems dragons picked up and moved farther away, only being spotted in the hinterlands without news.
You apparently would keep your mind open to the idea that dragons don't like the smell of newsprint as no other conclusion could be more plausible sheerly on the basis of logic?
layman51
6 hours ago
This idea of unconscious memories perhaps being a type of fantasy is also discussed in this article too:
agumonkey
8 hours ago
I beg to differ, or at least I'd need clarification, some people experience traumatic visions from what is assumed repressed memories (with or without therapy)
It might be something that one might not understand if he/she doesn't live through it I guess
bollocks9
10 hours ago
What about Dr. Jim Tucker’s two child psych cases, James Leininger and Ryan Hammons?
One remembered memories of a WWII pilot named James Huston Jr. and the other a deceased Hollywood agent named Marty Martyn.
Putting aside the reincarnation hypothesis for the moment, do you think the kids invented the details and coincidentally happened to match to a real person or were they fully coached? Maybe they didn’t get enough sleep or got too much sleep?
ghurtado
10 hours ago
> any memories "re-surfacing" in therapy are in fact newly created,
You're saying that those memories are exactly the same as all the other memories.
Every time you "recall" something, you are not pulling up some file that is always the same. You are actively recreating the memory.
There's nothing "fun" or insightful about this, this mechanism has been known for a long time.
Obviously it's not unique to psychotherapy.
> may have been created
Most things that "may" have happened do not warrant absolute statements such as "that's not a thing" (which, incidentally, is a particularly empty statement in any context, since every thing is a thing)
bozhark
7 hours ago
Careful with this absolute assumption. The brain rationalizes. Though irrationally.
Sometimes yes, created to validate, sometimes no, unlearns to disassociate
slater
11 hours ago
Gonna need some citations on that “fun fact”
blauditore
11 hours ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recovered-memory_therapy (especially the research section)
ghurtado
10 hours ago
Claim: "modern cancer research is a scam"
Proof: "colloidal silver has been used to attempt to cure cancer".
Solid logic.
svnt
10 hours ago
That is extremely weak to nonexistent counter-evidence that seems to focus on supporting Loftus, who has put a lot of effort into the defense of her public persona. I don’t disagree that it is possible to manufacture memories but the evidence isn’t there to support your conclusion or the converse.
Aurornis
10 hours ago
Recovered-memory therapy (the topic of the Wikipedia article) is very clearly quack science and has been discredited.
Some of the techniques used in the therapy include giving patients sedative-hypnotic drugs to put the patient in a waking dream-like state while the therapist asks leading questions to get them to "remember" an event. The same drugs they used are known to be associated with false memories, like when someone falsely recalls something from a vivid dream as having actually happened.
svnt
6 hours ago
It has fallen out of favor based on a lack of evidential support, for sure. It has not really been dismantled publicly scientifically, but mostly quietly, perhaps in order to protect its practitioners, perhaps because the research cannot currently be ethically conducted.
I am not advocating for it, just stating the near total lack of substantive scientific evidence presented either in support or opposed.
ghurtado
10 hours ago
People downvoting a request for supporting evidence is peak Hacker News.
fsckboy
10 hours ago
people demanding supporting evidence without expending any effort themselves is peak internet.
jjk166
8 hours ago
The onus of proof lies on those making a claim. If you're unwilling to back up what you say, don't say it.
nwienert
3 hours ago
In science. On a casual forum you have no obligation and I’d rather someone leave a short comment so I at least know, if I’m interested I’ll go look and verify myself.
theshackleford
6 hours ago
It’s not my job to track down proof only every bullshit claim thrown at me.
anal_reactor
10 hours ago
Most people think that when their memory fails it's just the act of not remembering something, but misremembering something happens equally often, and completely making up shit also does happen. It's just like LLM hallucinations.
DenisM
11 hours ago
Cleanup is an LRU process.
Once a memory lapses you have to relearn from life experience (or not at all).
thaumasiotes
8 hours ago
No, a lapsed memory can be provoked. It doesn't have to be relearned. It is "lapsed" because the organizational path to it within your brain has been lost, like a book in a library that has been left out of the card catalog, but just like the book, if you happen to find it anyway, it will be there.
Compare, from https://evolutionistx.wordpress.com/2016/12/16/anthropology-... :
> at the first news of English ships in the area, Buckley rushed to the spot. He attempted to make contact, but couldn’t swim out to the ship and couldn’t convince the ship to send a boat to him (Buckley had, at this point, forgotten how to speak English.) Buckley was again heartbroken until another ship showed up, and he found the English colonists and tried to approach them:
> “Presently some of the natives saw me, and turning round, pointed me out to one of the white people; and seeing they had done so, I walked away from the well, up to their place, and seated myself there, having my spears and other war and hunting implements between my legs. The white men could not make me out–my half-cast colour, and extraordinary height and figure [Buckley was around 6’5” or taller,]–dressed, or rather undressed, as I was–completely confounding them as to my real character. At length one of them came up and asked me some questions, which I could not understand; but when he offered me bread–calling it by its name–a cloud appeared to pass from over my brain, and I soon repeated that, and other English words after him. …
> “Word by word I began to comprehend what they said, and soon understood, as if by instinct, that they intended to remain in the country; that they had seen several of the native chiefs, with whom–as they said–they had exchanged all sorts of things for land; but that I knew could not have been
I submit that it takes more than a day to learn English if you don't already know it.
Once I was in a Toys-R-Us and noticed a cover image among the bottom-of-the-barrel DVD display which caused me to put what I was doing on hold for several minutes while I stared at the DVD. I bought it, and it turned out to be a movie I had watched many times when I was very young, but that information hadn't been accessible to me.
bigbuppo
11 hours ago
I forgot what I was going to type, but I didn't get enough sleep last night.
jyounker
11 hours ago
Are you sure about that?
ghurtado
10 hours ago
I realize you're making a joke, but there is no such thing as "unreferenced memories", as in, something that is no longer in use and has been removed from the brain.
Every memory your brain has ever produced is still there, even if most are beyond conscious access. Memories quite literally become a permanent part of you.
A lot of people mistakenly think of human memory as a sort of hard drive with limited capacity, with files being deleted to make room for new ones. It's very much not like that.
pdonis
10 hours ago
If you are implying that human memory has infinite capacity, that's not possible. The human brain is a finite, physical thing. It can't store an infinite amount of data.
If you just mean that human memory has a finite capacity that's much larger than anyone has come close to reaching by storing the memories of a normal human lifetime, that might make sense.
Do you have any references for your statements about memory? I'm not familiar with whatever science there is in this area.
jjk166
8 hours ago
The claim that everything is there does not imply infinite, or even large capacity.
Consider an exponentially weighted moving average - you can just keep putting more data in forever and the memory requirement is constant.
The brain stores information as a weighted graph which basically acts as lossy compression. When you gain more information, graph weights are updated, essentially compressing what was already in there further. Eventually you get to a point where what you can recall is useless, which is what we would consider forgotten, and eventually the contribution of a single datapoint becomes insignificant, but it never reaches zero.
pdonis
7 hours ago
> The claim that everything is there does not imply infinite, or even large capacity.
It implies enough capacity to store everything. But what you describe is not storing everything.
> lossy compression
Which means you're not storing all the information. You're not storing everything.
> When you gain more information, graph weights are updated, essentially compressing what was already in there further.
In other words, each time you store a new memory, you throw some old information away.
Which the person I was responding to said does not happen.
ghurtado
10 hours ago
I didn't mean either of the things that you are wondering whether I meant, so i can't give you evidence of those things you made up yourself.
If you have questions about my comment, I'm happy to try to explain myself better
"I didn't understand you at all, so you must have meant either A or B" is not the way to reach an understanding
pdonis
9 hours ago
> i can't give you evidence of those things you made up yourself.
I didn't ask for that. I asked if you have references for what you said. Even if I misunderstood you, that shouldn't be a reason for you not to give references for your statements, if you have them.
If you don't have any references to back up your statements, then I'm not sure what you're basing them on.
vanviegen
10 hours ago
Your words: "Every memory your brain has ever produced is still there [..]"
How would that not imply infinite storage?
dragonwriter
9 hours ago
It wouldn't imply infinite storage because human life is not infinite in time and memories do not accumulate at an infinite rate in storage consumed per unit time, so the total storage over a human lifespan is finite, so the claim can be true with finite storage.
It is almost certainly false, but it doesn't require infinite storage to be true.
pdonis
7 hours ago
> human life is not infinite in time and memories do not accumulate at an infinite rate in storage consumed per unit time
Which would put it into the category of the second part of my comment--which the person I was responding to said was not relevant to what they meant.
standardly
9 hours ago
> The human brain is a finite, physical thing. It can't store an infinite amount of data.
True, but it doesn't really detract from his statement because do we really know what that upper bound even is? I don't think we come close to the theoretical storage limit... So saying "every memory you have is permanently stored" is effectively true, at least true enough for a thought experiment like this. Perhaps when people live to be 200 years old and we know more about the brain we can test this, though.
I used to be weary of learning new, complex things, thinking I'd "lose" old knowledge XD
pdonis
7 hours ago
> I don't think we come close to the theoretical storage limit
That was the point of the second part of my comment--which the person I was responding to said was not relevant to what he meant.
vanviegen
10 hours ago
Bullocks. Memories fade. Or do you really believe that 'subconsciously' I still know what I had for dinner today exactly 30 years ago?
The way I understand it, it's just that, unlike on disk, the deletion process is not binary. Weak connections that are not revisited regularly gradually become weaker, until they're undistinguishable from noise (false memories).
mym1990
10 hours ago
Knowing almost nothing about memory and the brain, I don't know if I agree with "Every memory your brain has ever produced is still there".
Memories seem to be constructed by a group of neurons together, and it seems clear that neurodegeneration is a thing, whether by trauma or due to aging. When pathways degenerate, maybe you have a partial memory that you brain can help fill the gaps with(and often incorrectly), but that does not make it the original memory.
lux_sprwhk
10 hours ago
I had this experience at Big Bend State park that makes me think they are. I didn't bring enough water and camped in the primitive area. At night, I was dehydrated pretty bad. When I finally got a little sleep (it was tough to say the least), I had this vivid dream where I put a pebble in my mouth and started sucking on it to make saliva. Then I woke up for real, and I knew it because there was a lot of wind IRL, that wasn't in the dream. So I took out a coin from my back, put it in my mouth to make saliva, and got a little bit of relief. Enough for a couple hours until it was dawn, and had enough light to hike down to the restroom area.
I don't know where I got this trick. Likely some survival show or some novel. But I don't have any background in survival, otherwise, I would have brought a lot more water.
So my brain knew there was a memory that could help and made up a dream about it is my theory.
Zenul_Abidin
10 hours ago
Is Sun Microsystems in the room with us?
hinkley
4 hours ago
Skip enough sleep and parts of your brain will try to nap while you’re doing things like meetings.